Major server outage hits Final Fantasy 14’s North American data centers

On January 5, Final Fantasy 14 players faced a sudden disruption as all four North American Data Centers went offline shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. Within an hour, the servers returned; however, players on social media believed the outage was due to a blown power transformer in Sacramento, where the data centers are located.

The game has had technical problems, and this outage is merely another in that series. DDoS, or distributed denial of service, seems to have struck Final Fantasy 14 servers repeatedly in 2024, flooding the servers with distracting traffic.

This led to high latency and server disconnects, making the game virtually unplayable. Square Enix introduced steps to minimize the damage from DDoS attacks, but nothing like this is 100% preventable. In such incidents, players often rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs, to stabilize their connections.

Final Fantasy users heard an explosion

According to posts on the r/ffxiv subreddit, moments before the outage, some users felt an explosion or a large pop. These same sources said the noise was consistent with a blown transformer, and it’s believed that the transformer was responsible for the brief power outage that affected the data centers.

Square Enix confirmed around 9 PM Eastern that servers were back online and said it was investigating the incident.

North American servers were slower to recover, while the game’s European, Japanese, and Oceanic servers remained unaffected. First to come back were the Aether, Crystal, and Primal Data Centers, which remained offline longer, while the Dynamis Data Center remained down.

With Final Fantasy 14 already planning an ambitious 2025 that includes a mobile version, these server problems are all too familiar.

While it’s still unclear how these continued issues will impact the game’s future, Square Enix is still left with the task of managing a consistent gaming experience for its globally dispersed player base.

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